Before we begin, we need to establish three critical assumptions.
First, college football is Sport.
Second, in its truest and most elemental form, Sport is about competition.
From this existence of competition, other entities of Sport are borne.
Specifically, the recreational motivations of college football are
derived from the competitive aspect of Sport itself. It is fun to
compete. Further, from this competitive recreation, financial
motivations arise. Schools, conferences, and the NCAA will sell their
football competitions because people will pay to watch. If the contest
didn't exist, college football would be nothing more than a Sudoku
puzzle or a word search -- purely an element of recreation and not
nearly as financially successful on a spectatorial level. No one would
pay to watch us finish a Sudoku puzzle even though no one denies that
Sudoku puzzles are ecstatically fun.
So that sort of rounds us into our main point, and
our third assumption: Although recreation and business are often seen
as principles of athletics, they are not the core of what college
football is fundamentally about: competition.
Now, let's hypothetically say that it's 2008, we're the Boise St.
Broncos football team, and our team is good. We went undefeated this
year, 12-0, and won our conference (the Western Athletic Conference)
with an 8-0 record. On average, we've beaten our opponents by three
touchdowns per game. We even traveled to #17 Oregon -- of the Pac-10
-- and beat the Ducks in Eugene. We're one of only two undefeated
teams in the entire college football country (Utah being the other).
We're currently the 9th-ranked team in the nation. You would think
we'd at least get a chance to play for a national championship, right?
Not quite. We're slated to play #11 Texas Christian U. in the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl on December 23.
Wait ... what?
Why even have a team? What's the point? If we can
win every single one of our games and still not be given a chance to
prove ourselves as the best football team in the country, why even
bother suiting up? Ultimately, from a Sporting perspective, there's no
reason to have a Boise St. Broncos football team. Actually, there's no
point in having a WAC either. If none of the WAC teams can advance for
a chance to play for a national championship, the league should just
drop down to Division 1 Football Championship Subdivision, right?
And see, this is why college football is especially frustrating.
Because Boise St. doesn't belong to a wealthy, power-hungry BCS
conference, they don't have the clout or the financially-invested means
to advance to a national championship or even to a better bowl game in
general. The WAC can't pimp out Boise St. the same way the SEC can
pimp out Florida/LSU/Alabama. But still, the obvious reason of having
a Boise St. football team is Money. The school makes money; the
conference makes money; the important figures make money. Not as much
as the BCS conferences or the universities that compose them, but
enough to maintain the established order.
And we have it: All of a sudden the inherent
greatness of Sport is compromised. College football is no longer
concerned with what Sport is, with competition. Bigger, wealthier
conferences with more at stake financially get the chance to compete
for the national championships and the better bowl games, whereas the
undefeated Boise Sts. of the world get trapped in the SDCCU Poinsettia
Bowls on freaking December 23. Yet, ultimately Boise St. doesn't --
or, perhaps more accurately, can't -- care enough to do anything about
it. Even though their entire existence as a football team is glass
ceiling-ed, the school and the WAC still get paid, and that's all that
matters. That's enough for the status quo. That's enough to belittle
college football into nothing more than a business, to rob it of its
true purpose, of its true elegance. Everyone knows and understands and
accepts this as The Way It Is. And that's horribly frustrating.
If the BCS is disbanded or altered in favor of a playoff system -- and of all the ideas thrown about, I happen to think
this one is the best -- one would hope college football could regain at least some semblence of its true competitive self as Sport.
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